It began in 1845 with the invention of the modern baseball field. It continues with the Brewers' home opener Monday with the retractable roof at Miller Park.

Baseball has embraced change and new technologies all through the history of the sport. Now baseball fans can get a sense of that evolution at the new Discovery World Museum exhibit: "MEARS Presents Baseball - Innovations That Changed the Game."| March 31, 2013»Read Full Article

This weekend, the Phoenix resident is back home in Milwaukee (his parents still live in Waukesha), with a show at the Riverside Theater, 116 W. Wisconsin Ave., at 7 p.m. Saturday. Then at noon Saturday, fans have a chance to play ping pong with Caliendo at Spin Milwaukee, 233 E. Chicago St., from noon to 3 p.m. for a chance to get drink coupons and to be entered for a ticket giveaway to his show Saturday night. | Jan. 24, 2014»Read Full Article

Danny Gokey tells the Hollywood Reporter that he's keeping up with "American Idol," and may even appear on the show this season.

In a Q&A posted Friday, Gokey, the Milwaukee native who finished in third in the 2009 edition of "Idol," said returning to the show that launched his career is a goal this year. | Jan. 24, 2014»Read Full Article

On faith: Gladwell had finished his reporting on Mike Reynolds, the father of a murdered teenage daughter who helped lead the movement for Three Strikes legislation in California. He thought he was done with that topic, but a minister friend of Gladwell's family suggested the writer talk with a parent who suffered the similar loss of a child, but responded differently. That led Gladwell to Wilma Derksen, a Manitoba woman with a Mennonite background who took the idea of forgiving those who trespass against you literally. Derksen's story, and the story of Huguenots in France who defied the Nazis, have led Gladwell back to faith. "In both cases, people were able to do extraordinary things because they were armed with faith. They were able to perform acts of courage because they came from godly traditions," he said in a Religion News Service interview. | Jan. 24, 2014»Read Full Blog Post

As he pulled together nonfiction stories about underdogs and people who overcame great obstacles to achieve success, Malcolm Gladwell thought he'd tie the package together with the conventional tale of David vs. Goliath, the shepherd boy who defeated the giant Philistine warrior with his slingshot.

Milwaukee has a new contender for unofficial city song, courtesy of Aimee Mann and Ted Leo.

The indie rockers revealed to Rolling Stone on Friday morning that they were joining forces for a new band, the Both. The band's self-titled album will drop April 15 on Mann's SuperEgo Records, led by first track "Milwaukee," a toe-tapping pop rocker loaded with peppy hand claps, some ripping guitar riffs and a reference to the Bronze Fonz. | Jan. 24, 2014»Read Full Article

Following the phenomenal success of Gillian Flynn's "Gone Girl," mysteries with a scheming female narrator, dark twisted plot and a big disturbing reveal are becoming increasingly popular. It's only a month into the new year and I already have a stack of books from publishers pitching the next "Gone Girl." Not surprisingly, my first recommendation of 2014 has a female narrator who gripped me as much as Flynn's did.

Pirio Kasparov narrates Elisabeth Elo's debut "North of Boston" (Pamela Dorman Books, $27.95). She's not nearly as diabolical as Flynn's narrator, but she is just as remarkable. Like her deceased supermodel Russian mother, Pirio is "not a conventional woman." She's wealthy, intelligent, "mercurial" and maddeningly myopic, wielding "the truth like a heavy sword," cutting down "humbler ones" she doesn't see, often rushing into situations without considering consequences. | Jan. 24, 2014»Read Full Article

Forced to take just one novel for company to that proverbial desert island, I'd instantly choose George Eliot's "Middlemarch" (1871-'72), which I've been rereading every several years since my first encounter in college.

D.H. Lawrence praised Eliot — pen name for Mary Ann Evans — as the novelist who "started putting all the action inside," developing the sort of interior monologues we're more apt to associate with Modernists than mid-Victorians. | Jan. 24, 2014»Read Full Article(1)

On Fridays I'm posting my thoughts on Lou Reed's solo albums, one album at a time in chronological order of release.

It's hard to come up with a simple description for "The Bells" (1979), which Lou Reed produced himself, recorded with his working band and one special guest star. In some aspects, with its touches of R&B, disco and jazz, it can be called the closest Reed ever came to a black music album. But a couple of tracks here would not have been out of place on a Bruce Springsteen or Southside Johnny album of the period. | Jan. 24, 2014»Read Full Blog Post(1)

Ten local monthly winners will compete Jan. 31 in The Moth's first Milwaukee GrandSLAM storytelling championship at Turner Hall, 1040 N. 4th St.

The Moth is the not-for-profit storytelling project founded by George Dawes Green, with local events around the country. (The Moth Radio Hour is broadcast on public radio stations around the country, including Milwaukee's WHAD-FM.) | Jan. 24, 2014»Read Full Article

The Best of Brew City is your mobile guide to going out in Milwaukee. Locate events, live music, bars and restaurants near you and in Milwaukee's most popular neighborhoods. Visit bestofbrewcity.com and download the app for iOS or Android today.

Wisconsin Beer Week 2014 at Blackbird Bar, 3007 S. Kinnickinnic Ave., kicks off Sunday and runs through Wednesday, with tastings from state breweries nightly — five different ones each night, totaling up to 20 — from 6 to 8 p.m. | Jan. 24, 2014»Read Full Article

I was at a party, an opening reception for a tiny upstart gallery in Riverwest called the General Store.

Still new to the paper, I had recently written about the new gallery and another project, Zero TV, a pre-YouTube, avant-garde but frat-house silly web channel. So, I knew a lot of the people there already, including Bobby Ciraldo, Zero TV's programmer and one of its stars. | Jan. 24, 2014»Read Full Article(1)

Don't get me wrong; small plates in all their variety are great. But sometimes you just have to have a steak, you know? Something thick and juicy and really kind of flabbergasting in its un-small-plateness.

Carson's, a Chicago restaurant that opened an outpost in downtown Milwaukee last year, is the anti-small plate, the home of big beef. | Jan. 24, 2014»Read Full Article(33)